THey may get some law passed on this when some congressmen ( and ladies) get their credit screwed up. This is something that needs to be handled. Stop SS# from being used for anything other than SS. Make companies pay severely for this kind of preventable crap.

Remember that you are not a customer of these credit bureaus. You are a product that is sold.

i recommend every one put a credit freeze in place for all three bureaus and look into locking your SS# to prevent Tax fraud.

For the credit bureaus , you have to remember to unlock it for a day. it is a web page. My friend who has had issues with stolen credit says he forgets all the time. Buying a new car. Opps. Go home, find the pin, unlock the credit report for a day.

For the SS#, if your taxes are done by someone else, you can allow them access. Otherwise keep it locked. I NEVER give out SS# if I can help it. It is not a personal ID that people treat it as. It should not be used as such.

_________________To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.- Henri Poincaré

For the credit bureaus , you have to remember to unlock it for a day. it is a web page. My friend who has had issues with stolen credit says he forgets all the time. Buying a new car. Opps. Go home, find the pin, unlock the credit report for a day.

For the SS#, if your taxes are done by someone else, you can allow them access. Otherwise keep it locked. I NEVER give out SS# if I can help it. It is not a personal ID that people treat it as. It should not be used as such.

Agreed. But when service providers require a SS# to do business? It's not like you can refuse.

_________________"I wish Fraudlin would get testicular cancer and die after he watches me anally penetrate his wife."

For the credit bureaus , you have to remember to unlock it for a day. it is a web page. My friend who has had issues with stolen credit says he forgets all the time. Buying a new car. Opps. Go home, find the pin, unlock the credit report for a day.

For the SS#, if your taxes are done by someone else, you can allow them access. Otherwise keep it locked. I NEVER give out SS# if I can help it. It is not a personal ID that people treat it as. It should not be used as such.

Agreed. But when service providers require a SS# to do business? It's not like you can refuse.

Which is why you would write your congressman and tell them to either stop it via a law or set a punishment so high that it is cheaper to either to generate their own ID or take proper security of them. I think a minimum of 100K per number or higher. If Equifax had to play $143,000,000,000,000 fine, they might want to be more careful. They lost, basically, every adult in the US SS# along with some credit card numbers and credit history.

_________________To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.- Henri Poincaré

THey may get some law passed on this when some congressmen ( and ladies) get their credit screwed up. This is something that needs to be handled. Stop SS# from being used for anything other than SS. Make companies pay severely for this kind of preventable crap.

Remember that you are not a customer of these credit bureaus. You are a product that is sold.

i recommend every one put a credit freeze in place for all three bureaus and look into locking your SS# to prevent Tax fraud.

Some interesting info in this articleon the puts that were traded on Equafax before they reported the breach

Quote:

The question is of extra consequence in Equifax, where data show a surge in bearish put contracts weeks before the credit-reporting firm disclosed a security breach that sent its stock down 35 percent. CNBC reported Wednesday that a House committee is seeking information on the trades, which Business Insider said it could’ve grossed $10 million.

An Equifax spokeswoman didn’t respond to a telephone call seeking comments on the options trades. The reported probe is separate from a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of stock sales by Equifax insiders prior to the Sept. 7 disclosure.

One piece of data the panel will be interested in is whether volume in the options was initiated by buyers or sellers. While puts in their simplest form are wagers that a stock will fall, in the through-the-looking-glass world of derivatives markets, an equally important consideration is whether the trader was bullish or bearish when he entered the transaction.

In short, someone who sold the put -- that is, had a bearish view on the contract, as opposed to buying it -- would not have made money in the subsequent Equifax rout. While “selling a put” sounds absurd -- betting on a decline in an option that itself is a bet on a decline in a stock -- it happens all the time. Traders do it when they’re convinced a stock won’t fall and want to pocket the price of the option.

Establishing who makes and loses money on a given options trade is as much art as science. In the case of Equifax, data compiled by Bloomberg show that almost 2,700 puts changed hands on Aug. 21, the most for any day since 2005, including two blocks of 1,250 September $135 puts each. At the same time, some see evidence those contracts were “sold” -- that is, a seller approached market makers and asked the options be “written” and purchased from him.

What evidence? Mainly that the two blocks of options changed hands at 70 cents and 75 cents, or near the “bid,” the market price set by a buyer (the options had a bid/offer spread of 70/95 cents). Normally, when a seller initiates a transaction, he must do it at his counterparty’s terms.

“The size is definitely unusual given the average total daily volume below 50 contracts, but the trade details suggest an opening seller initiated the trade, so it’s not quite the smoking gun that some other reports have suggested,” Henry Schwartz, president of analytics firm Trade Alert wrote in an email. “Based on implied volatility and the bid-offer spread at the time of the trade, it seems very clear the options were sold given the $0.70 and $0.75 execution prices.”

_________________To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.- Henri Poincaré

But you have to pay to lock and unlock. Which isn't a big deal if you aren't addicted to those stupid store discounts "get 15% off today if you open a credit account".

Personally, in a digital age it costs them NOTHING to lock and unlock your credit (other than the lost revenue on selling your info without your permission). It should be free to lock and unlock as often as you choose for as long as you choose.

FYI, I was hit with identity theft. All 3 services gave me a free lifetime credit freeze - as law requires them to - and Transunion and Experian gave me free lock and unlock as often as I like. Equifax, however, made up a bullshit technicality to deny me that legally entitled service. They can rot in hell.

Call/write your congressman/woman. There are bills that propose that we should never have to pay to lock and unlock our credit reports. I'll dig around and see if it has a name.

It's such a common sense solution. Identity thieves aren't going to waste their time trying to unlock someone's credit when there is lower-hanging fruit out there. Plus, the security checks to unlock is another layer of information they might have trouble cracking.